Good news: Travel destinations and attractions are slowly beginning to open their doors to guests again.
Not so good news: There is a good chance many will have new guidelines in place that may change the experience. For example, guests might find limited attractions (if it requires a lot of touching or sharing and is not easy to sanitize often, it might be temporarily closed or limited on participants) and be asked to wear masks and maintain social distancing.
With so much still unknown, many families are postponing vacations and opting to have a staycation this year instead.
As all Macaroni Kid readers know, communities across the country offer countless opportunities for fun, entertainment, and relaxation. But we wanted to dive a little deeper and find out which cities top the list for best staycation locations.
So we asked our friends over at WalletHub for some insight. To identify the best spots for staying local, WalletHub compared more than 180 cities across 15 key indicators of a fun-filled, yet wallet-friendly staycation. The data set ranges from parks per capita to the average home square footage and the idealness of summer weather.
Here's a look at the 10 best cities for staycations:
1. Plano, TX
2. Boise, ID
3. Tampa, FL
4. Charleston, SC
5. Lincoln, NE
6. Fort Smith, AR
7. Scottsdale, AZ
8. Grand Prairie, TX
9. Austin, TX
10. Orlando, FL
At the bottom of the list are:
173. San Jose, CA
174. Oceanside, CA
175. Stockton, CA
176. Fremont, CA
177. Oxnard, CA
178. Oakland, CA
179. Providence, RI
180. Warwick, RI
181. Chula Vista, CA
182. Pearl City, HI
See each state's ranking by hovering over it on the map below:
Some more interesting findings from the WalletHub study:
- New York City has the most parks (per square root of population), 23.9 times more than in Hialeah, Florida, the city with the fewest.
- San Francisco has the most bike rental facilities (per square root of population), which is 49.4 times more than in Detroit, the city with the fewest.
- San Francisco has the most walking routes (per square root of population), which is 31.7 times more than in El Paso, Texas, the city with the fewest.
- Fort Smith, Arkansas, has the lowest average price of pizza of $8.00, 1.9 times lower than in Stockton, California, the city with the highest at $15.25.
Sources: Data used to create this ranking were collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, Council for Community and Economic Research, Under Armour, Trust for Public Land, League of American Bicyclists, Walk Score, Kaiser Family Foundation, Yelp, Zillow, and WalletHub research.
